


Outsider.

by LucifurMacomb



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, The Void
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 15:10:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7057585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucifurMacomb/pseuds/LucifurMacomb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He’d heard stories of the void as a young boy- either reference made by a screaming preacher, or whispering cultist in a backstreet alley. It was nothing like they’d said. "</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outsider.

He opened his eyes and there was nothing. Like waking up any other morning, he brushed the glaze out of his eyes and stared.  
If there was a horizon, there was nothing as far as the eye could see. He looked down, and gasped in terror, there was nothing supporting him. He was adrift in void. Was he falling? Was the space moving around him? Was there any movement at all? A place of stillness, and his being there was interrupting the entire balance of the cosmos.  
The “sky” was a still blue, or maybe a grey? Where was he?  
He clenched his skin- still dressed in rags, still stains of blood, he automatically pulled them around himself- protecting his pale skin from the cold. But still: Nothing, absent of temperature.  
And then he began to remember. The Void.  
He wanted to shout, scream, cry. Die. Die? Was he even alive? Was this the segway to the afterlife? Was this his soul merging with the cosmos? Was this anything? Anything at all?  
No. Nothing. 

He’d heard stories of the void as a young boy- either reference made by a screaming preacher, or whispering cultist in a backstreet alley. It was nothing like they’d said. They’d call the void both a hellish realm, and a place of true power- accordingly. But this: There was no life, no manner of being, no noise, no smell, no textures to anything- including his own body. It was void of all things.  
It was The Void.  
He put his best foot forward, trying to balance on nothing, and stepped into the emptiness. The foot met a non existent floor- a floor he’d expected to be there. He imagined a staircase, and climbed it. A hill, and descended it. A chair, and sat in it.  
The boy stared into the nothingness, his expression concerned, but then… A smirk.  
A small chuckle. He looked over his body, his environment, and laughed. But it wasn’t funny, and this was more than nervous laughter. He felt he was going mad. Everything he’d even known had suddenly changed. Was he at the mercy of a God? A pause. What if there was no Gods, no devils, no sins, nothing… only Void. The laugh turned into a cry, a tear rolling down one of his malnourished cheeks. He stood from the missing chair, and began to run. He ran for what seemed close to an hour- never needing to stop or catch his breath. He might as well have gone no where. The thought passed his mind of: Had he gone anywhere? He called out -- there wasn’t even an echo.  
Pressing his palms against his temples he tried to remember how he got here. What had happened to him?  
There was something about a group of people, dressed in colourful robes.  
They’d picked him up off the street with promises of… something. And the next minute he’d awoke here. Pondering on it for a few moments, he saw flashes of what might’ve happened to him. Was there a light? What was part of his imagination and what was reality? It was so hard to tell the difference.

He curled up in a ball and tried to sleep. To wake up.  
He couldn’t. 

The boy spent the first few hundred years losing his mind, without eating, sleeping, or doing anything he was used to as a human. Eventually he got bored of going mad, and decided to try something else. Slowly, he figured out how to walk between the void and the mortal world.  
Most people would walk right through him, without noticing him. Others would look right at him- falling and quivering in the streets. The boy was interested in the plights of man, having lost his mind and mortality: What did he have to lose? He’d forgotten his own name, that or he’d left it behind. He was an outsider to the living now, living beyond the mortal plane, practically fathered by the void- and so: He was The Outsider.  
It wasn’t the most ornate of names, but it was neither his idea- nor did it need to have much meaning. It was one he’d preferred- overhearing a few who began to notice him.  
These individuals began to pay worship to the boy, at first the boy enjoyed it- having spent most of his mortal life being ignored, shunned, and beat - eventually however he grew bored with it. With a realisation that, he was spending a time in two places, his home town and the Void- there was a whole world to be explored. In the void he devised a symbol for those to recognise him with. He began to leave it at shrines, when people prayed to him. He felt he could do little for them, but he wanted them to know he was listening. They took the symbols and began to tattoo them on their bodies, engrave them into bricks and bone. It became a custom among cultists to carve them into the bones of whales. Decorating the bone with iron, and pattern about the ruin. The Outsider found it interesting, he noticed it- without word of mouth -it picked up as a common occurrence. Even when showing himself to the natives of Pandyssia-they took the bones of whales, and many of the land’s strange creatures. Carving the Mark of The Outsider into bones. 

Over time the void began to look different for the Outsider. No longer was it a vast space of nothingness. It had taken a certain feel to it. Lanterns floated in the space, with the occasional chunk of land - sometimes it would be something he remembered from his mortal life, other times it would be all but an extract from the present state of the world.  
The Outsider, now slowing aging into a young man, was beginning to understand his power. His curse. It had been over 1000 years now, since he woke up here, and so much had changed. He had conjured new attire for himself, often changing every few hundred years- occasionally he would return to his rags when in Pandyssia. But the people of The Isles would know better than to see a figure in tatters.  
He began to grant gifts, occasionally he would be prayed upon by a poor soul looking for some good in the world- asking for humble things such as just enough coin to feed their family. The Outsider would bite his tongue when he heard such requests. Often men of wealth would pray to him in secret for more money and power- more often than not, he would turn his nose up to such “prayers”. But the plea of a poor woman would have him scratch his neck, having him look back to what he was. and question what he was really trying to accomplish. If anything.  
His mark was something different entirely, a gift of great value. At first he gives it out to people he deemed “worthy,” but often they’d kill themselves by trying to show off. Some met their demises by falling off of rooftops, others were eaten by rats. Some however would fully embrace the Mark- but they brought chaos to the world. Often in a cut-throat manner. The Outsider quickly realised the true potential of his mark. But he was still young- and would occasionally give it out just for his amusement. He had his followers search out runes for him, sometimes giving their little trinkets some meaning. 

Time meant very little to him these days. He did not keep up with the times, the politics, or the people. The Outsider knew he was prayed to by all sorts, by now there were even groups against him. Probably set up by a widow of one of the idiots who fell from a roof- he joked. Alone. This was a slow time, very little was happening. Occasionally he would look to the world; walking the Pandyssian beaches at sunset, seeing the stars reflect off the ocean, even watching the smoke rise from the pyres of his followers. Everything had a new appearance to it.  
He’d taken the time to look in the mirror, the thought not really passing him by due to the absence of any importance of his appearance. And for the first time in over 2000 years, he noticed his eyes.  
Black. Pitch black eyeballs. He knew they weren’t just holes in his face- but when he looked into a mirror, and saw himself looking back, he saw the world one-thousand-times over. Every detail, knook and cranny, every face, every heartbeat, everything. In a single moment something hit him:  
In this world, there was everything. In the void, there was nothing. 

The Outsider was now a man, and as such he had become wiser. He could remember the moment he opened his eyes to the void as if it were yesterday.  
His had a new outlook on the world now. He was rarer to give out his Mark - occasionally giving it out, predicting that in this new world people would use it to their advantages - often things got bloody, to his cynical noticings.  
He’d visit some in their dreams, whisper in their ears ideas of his own. He found occasional people intersting. Some more interesting than others, and those where who he would talk to. Cold for the majority of those who prayed to him. But they didn’t go unnoticed, some he would exalt a bit of good fortune to. While most he was too “busy” to deal with. But even then- there were those who didn’t pray to him whom he gathered a real interest in. He looked at them and he saw cracks in time and space - a rare occurrence. He did not know of the future - but it was clear to him who would sculpt it. A boy who would grow up to become a force to be reckoned with. A lady who had the potential to rule the world. A girl who would exhibit true power. A youth who would eventually change the course of an Empire. Even an innocent kid, who just wanted to send the bullies away- and he meant something to the Outsider.  
He might not’ve been someone who was here to change the world, but he saw something in the boy.  
The boy growing up in poverty, the boy being kicked around, the boy barely eating, the boy whose only friend was a rat. The boy whose fate was twisted against him in one foul swoop.  
The Outsider saw something in the boy. He saw himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Based vaguely on tweets by Harvey Smith, taking some liberties for the pursuit of fiction.


End file.
